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25 February 2005

Dressed for diplomacy

Condoleezza Rice wore all black. She also wore high-heeled boots. And gauntlet-knives. Oh, and she carried a fully-loaded Uzi onstage and proceeded to unshackle an Islamist. Setting the Uzi in the middle of the stage, she and the Islamist started each thirty feet from the gun, began running towards the gun, and proceeded to fight using a mixture of taekwondo and hapkido to defeat the Islamist. After the fight, grinning with brilliantly white teeth, she ripped his head off with his bare hands and threw it to a legless veteran in the audience.

She then broke the Uzi in half with her bare knee, and gold coins poured out. She has changed the way we think about national security. Forever.

As Rice walked out to greet the troops, the coat blew open in a rather swashbuckling way to reveal the top of a pair of knee-high boots. The boots had a high, slender heel that is not particularly practical. But it is a popular silhouette because it tends to elongate and flatter the leg. In short, the boots are sexy.
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Rice's coat and boots speak of sex and power --- such a volatile combination, and one that in political circles rarely leads to anything but scandal. When looking at the image of Rice in Wiesbaden, the mind searches for ways to put it all into context. It turns to fiction, to caricature. To shadowy daydreams. Dominatrix! It is as though sex and power can only co-exist in a fantasy. When a woman combines them in the real world, stubborn stereotypes have her power devolving into a form that is purely sexual.